1. Before development of the Columbia/Snake River Basin, the annual salmon and steelhead runs on the Columbia and Snake Rivers were estimated to be 10-16 million wild fish. That's the number the Northwest Council adopted in 1987 that was arrived at by using lower river commercial catch records. The council also did an alternative method of lower river commercial catch plus upriver Indian and settler catch and came up with 12.5 to 13 million adult fish returning each year. Historically, about half of those wild salmonids were destined for the Snake River.

2. Today, the average Columbia/Snake River total run of salmon and steelhead (hatchery and wild fish) is about 10 percent of the historical high average and today’s runs are made up of roughly 80 percent hatchery fish and 20 percent wild fish. So about an average of 320,000 wild salmonids return to the Columbia/Snake Basin each year. That is about 2 percent of the historical run of 16 million fish and about 3.2 percent of the low historical run estimate of 10 million wild salmonids.

3. 10-year averages for total salmon/steelhead run through Lower Granite Dam. Chinook salmon total 2007-2016 consisted of 1,533,719 Chinook (adult and jack, all races Sp/Su/Fa) for an average of 153,372 chinook through Lower Granite Dam each year. Coho salmon (went extinct in the Snake River in 1986, Nez Perce Tribe used coho eggs from coastal streams to bring coho salmon back to the Snake River Basin) total 2007-2016 consisted of 48,331 coho salmon for an annual average of 4,833 coho salmon. There were 1,670,453 hatchery steelhead cross over Lower Granite Dam from 2007-2016 for an annual average of 167,045. For comparison, there have been 8,360 total hatchery steelhead cross over Lower Granite Dam in 2017, but the number is misleading because about 5,500 of those fish were from last year’s run that overwintered below Lower Granite Dam. Either way, the steelhead run this year is historically low. There were 442,716 wild steelhead pass over Lower Granite Dam from 2007-2016 for an annual average of 44,271 wild steelhead. This year 3,657 wild steelhead have passed over Lower Granite Dam, but about 2,200 of those fish were from last year’s run. Either way, this year’s wild steelhead run in the Snake River should serve as a powerful reminder that we are not doing enough to save wild salmonids in the Snake River Basin. There have been 11,152 sockeye salmon pass over the Lower Granite Dam from 2007-2016 for an annual average of 1,115 sockeye. Sockeye remain the most endangered salmonid in the Snake River Basin.

4. For endangered and threatened wild salmon and steelhead of the Snake River Basin to be removed from the Endangered Species List we need to have smolt-to-adult return rates (SARs) of 2-6 percent for eight consecutive years. To avoid extinction of wild Snake River salmon and steelhead, a smolt-to-adult return rate (SAR) of 1 percent would need to be achieved. SARs in the 2-6 percent range for eight consecutive years would constitute recovery of endangered wild salmon and steelhead. SARs for hatchery fish do not matter in the quest to recover wild salmonids and one day remove them from the Endangered Species List.

5. All but one (Ice Harbor Dam) lower Snake River dams were not operational before 1969.Snake River spring/summer chinook smolt-to-adult return rate (SAR) was 4.3 percent from 1964-1969. From 1994-1999 the SARs for Snake River salmonids was 1 percent, since 2000 it is 1.1 percent, far below the minimum 2 percent in the target 2-6 percent SAR required for eight consecutive years to constitute recovery. Wild spring/summer chinook met the 2 percent minimum in 1999 and 2008. From 2006-2015 the wild spring/summer chinook SAR in the Snake River Basin is 0.88 percent. That SAR is below the 1 percent minimum threshold for survival. From 1964-1969, wild steelhead in the Snake River Basin enjoyed a 7.2 percent SAR. From 1990-1999 wild steelhead SAR was 1.9 percent. From 2000-2014, wild steelhead had a 2.5 percent SAR, though never achieving recovery from the threatened status on the Endangered Species List. This year’s run is surely going to record a dismal smolt-to-adult return rate for wild steelhead in the Snake River Basin.

​7. Is 10 percent of what we used to get back for free worth $1 billion a year in perpetuity? Does 2 percent wild fish runs of historical runs constitute record runs in your estimation? If not, contact your congressional delegation and tell them to vote no on HR 3144.

8. Only wild fish matter when it comes to removal from the Endangered Species List. The dams now generate less than 4 percent of the power in the Pacific Northwest . The region has a 13 percent energy surplus and would still have about a 9 percent energy surplus without the four lower Snake River dams. A few years ago, 86 percent of the fisheries biologists in the western United States said that removing the four lower Snake River dams is the single best action mankind can take to allow these wild salmonids to recover.

9. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers labels the lower Snake River as a waterway of "negligible use." Container shipping on the lower Snake was suspended in the spring of 2015. Shipping on the Lower Snake is down 60 percent since 2000.

10. I like to end on a positive note. We can be the generation that saved wild salmon and steelhead in the Snake River Basin. We must inform our leaders that we can live without these deadbeat dams on the Lower Snake River and we will prosper after breaching these dams. I truly believe we borrow this world from our children, and when you borrow something you should return it to the owner in as good or better shape than it was in when you borrowed it. Here is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make the world a better place for our children and grandchildren. The Salmon Blog is working toward a future where the abundance of wild salmon challenges our notions to revere them. Please join me in freeing the Snake River and allowing wild salmonids to recover throughout the accessible Snake River Basin!

I want to tell you a story. I am going to tell you this story from the top of my head and I won't be using google to look anything up. I have been told on numerous occasions that I am a descendant of Capt. William Clark. I have never verified this, it's just something I was told by my father when he was alive on more than a few occasions. I always thought that was a cool thing but I never went about verifying it. I am from Kentucky and so was William Clark. And just about everyone from Kentucky is related. I mean, there are jokes about that...several of them. But I digress.

It is the 3rd Annual Free the Snake Flotilla Eve, and the stockings are...sorry, I'll get to it. When Uncle Clark passed through this region, and I now live in Lewiston. When Uncle William Clark came through this region there are several entries in Uncle Clark's journal that spoke of salmon and salmon-trout. He and Merriwether Lewis and the Corps of Discovery bore witness to what the Northwest Council in 1987 estimated to be wild salmonid runs of 10-16 million fish each year in the Columbia/Snake, with about half of those fish taking a right turn and swimming up the Snake River headed to natal streams in eastern Washington and Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada. How spectacular that must have been. Oh, to have witnessed that. What a joy, what a wonder! Apparently, my DNA did! I like to take a molecular view of things. I like to remind people that anything they eat or drink with calories is just part of the Big Bang due to the law of energy conservation that states energy cannot be created or destroyed. It all came from the Big Bang, so whether you are a carnivore, omnivore, vegetarian or vegan you're just eating the Big Bang and the only choice you are making is the degree of separation from that Big Bang. I get it, some of you want to be closer. Well, some of my DNA witnessed these fantastic wild salmonid runs of the Columbia/Snake and that is just cool. I moved out here to insert myself into the salmon narrative, it's plausible this came to me at a very molecular level. It was in my DNA, you might say. That's cool, I can't prove it, but it's cool to ponder.

After Uncle Clark paddled and portaged his way through, more people of European descent came to the region and began to develop it. First and ironically, we depleted the supply of beavers in the region and that was the first adverse effect that we had on salmon. Very few beavers soon led to less rearing habitat as beaver dams, of all things, actually aided salmon rearing giving salmon fry safer waters to grow. Then we came into the region in search of gold. That gold lust would soon make the promises my Uncle Clark made ring hollow as we encroached upon the Nimiipuuor as we called them the Nez Perce's land. With our lust for gold came our placer mines where we would blast away the banks of these streams that were choked with salmon, at least for a little while more. We left our piles of tailings that soon attracted Chinese immigrants who worked over those tailings finding plenty of gold dust to make it worthwhile.

Our mining camps were surrounded by forests and our mining camps needed lumber, as did our towns and our homesteads and our railroads. Soon we began to cut down every tree in sight and choke the rivers with logs rather than salmon. It was during this period that I like to joke that the number one killer of salmon and steelhead was blunt force trauma. In pretty short order the fish runs were diminished. Canneries that for a few years in interior places like near Payette Lake in Idaho would go out of business as the sockeye salmon, chinook salmon and steelhead runs would start to crash there and other places.

Fish run crashes were happening all over, but we had also learned how to propagate fish and hatcheries began to be built throughout the Pacific Northwest. We erroneously thought we could create a panacea of salmon by creating fish hatcheries throughout the region. Of course, we were wrong, and our unabashed lust for the raw materials of the region, coupled with our unrestricted harvest practices when it came to this literal manna from the heavens in the form of swarms of fish in our rivers led to great crashes in the fish runs.

And as if we wanted to add insult to injury to these once magnificent runs of wild fish, we started to build dams with reckless abandon in the Pacific Northwest. At first, the dams were small, but stopped anadramous fish migrations wherever they were built. Then came the public dams, larger dams, reclamation with no thought whatsoever to the fish we had cutoff from their natal streams, from their life cycle. Stories abound from newspaper accounts of salmon leaping hopelessly, over and over again into concrete walls, only to later die, completely spent at the bottom of some dam erected without a single thought for the migratory nature of these oh so important fish. Later, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife would tell us that salmon are a keystone species and that 137 different species rely on salmon for their survival. The WDFW forgot about us, indeed 138 species rely on salmon for survival, we humans have relied on salmon for tens of thousands of years.

Next came our beginning attempts at regulating harvest and later came our demands for fish passage at newly proposed dams. However, those demands came too late to stop Grand Coulee Dam from cutting off all of the upper Columbia River. Canada sends its regards, thanks America. Gone were the June hogs, immense chinook salmon that spawned above the Grand Coulee Dam, later replaced by a laser light show on the concrete face of our salmon genus-cide.

American dam builders finally caught up to the demands of the public as salmon stocks continued to dwindle in the face of an onslaught to every facet of their life cycle. We started adding fish ladders for the adult salmon to get over the dams and return to their natal streams. We kept on building dams thinking we had solved the problem with the addition of fish ladders, but we had only provided an avenue for return for the adults. We had yet to contemplate how these concrete wonders were killing off the salmon and steelhead smolts. In fact, we have yet to realize just how much our dams and our embracing of invasive species and our alterations of the migratory habitat have on salmonid smolts going to the ocean.

The inaction agencies, as I like to call them (US Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, and the marketers at Bonneville Power Administration) have yet to embrace the true harm of their dams and that is how you get five federal Biops declared illegal by federal judges over more than 20 years. They will tell you fantastic stories of plus 95 percent survival of salmon and steelhead smolts at their dams. What they exclude, conveniently I might add, is the fact that those numbers, those very misleading and false numbers are simply survival rates from one side of the concrete at a dam to the other side of the concrete. You and I know that the dams start killing salmon and steelhead smolts, both wild and hatchery when the current in the rivers begin to slack behind those dams. The real killing fields are near Asotin, Washingotn and Lewiston, Idaho on the Snake and Clearwater rivers. There the slackwater confuses the smolts who ride the freshets backwards to sea. They hit slackwater here in the Lewiston/Clarkston area and are picked off by predators. Predators like the native northern pikeminnow, which thrived in the slackwater reservoirs. Predators like the invasive smallmouth bass and walleye that our fish and game agencies threw in our waters to "improve" our fishing experience. Predators like cormorants and other fish eating birds that find confused fish as easily as Americans find an all you can eat buffet. Beyond the confusion of slackwater and a host of predators honed to kill smolts, our wild salmonid smolts are competing with 143 million hatchery smolts that we dump into our Columbia/Snake rivers each year. They are dealing with low flows and warm waters. Some are being picked up by the Corps of Engineers and given a cruise from below Lower Granite Dam to below Bonneville Dam. This barging increases straying, a phenomenon where salmon cannot find their natal streams.

Because we know we royally screwed up the greatest wild salmonid run in the world, we doubled down on the hatcheries in our futile efforts to mitigate for our dams. We sent fish culturists and some people who had no formal training to the dams and there they picked brood stock for their hatchery operations. Science was not used in this process. Essentially, when a fish large enough to make the selector utter an expletive, that fish was chosen to start a hatchery operation. The problem, of course with this approach circa late 1970s-early 1980s, salmon and steelhead have evolved over eons to be appropriately adapted to their natal streams, their migratory habitat, the Columbia estuary, and the northeastern Pacific Ocean. And we were just picking fish that made us say "DAMN!" and "Holy Shit that'a a big fish!" to create our hatcheries. Now we dump 5 billion hatchery fish into the northern Pacific Ocean through the conduits of connected streams from Russia, Korea, Japan, Canada and the United States. Obviously, adding 5 billion fish into the diminishing equation is going to have great obstacles for our wild salmonids to overcome.

Yet, they persist. And thank God, or the Big Bang or your second cousin twice removed for that. They are still here, though spring chinook and especially steelhead added haunting harmony to dirge the sockeye of the Snake have been playing since the early 1990s.

How do we fix this problem, we created? A few years ago, not that many actually, fisheries biologists throughout the west were asked what was the one thing we could do that would give wild salmonids of the Snake River Basin their best shot at recovery and 86 percent of them said breaching the four lower Snake River dams. Recognizing that people now win the election for president by losing by 3 million votes, I still think even an antiquated Electoral College would elect in a landslide breaching the dams with that kind of response from people who are paid to know these things.

I firmly believe in self-determination. We can do this. We can be the generation that saved the wild salmonids of the Snake River Basin. We can be the change we want to see in the world. We can free the Snake River and now is the time. We spend about $1 billion a year on dam maintenance and fish and wildlife mitigation for those dams. Those dams have not lived up to their promises of expanding river commerce, recreation, power generation. They have been a great failure.

The only legacy that Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose, and Lower Granite have had has been the march toward extinction of the greatest run of wild salmonids in the lower 48, nay-North America, nay again, the world. Right now, there are turbine refurbishments in the near future, a contract for two of those 26 turbines cost almost $100 million. Those costs for the remaining turbine refurbishments are only going to increase with your power bills. Those dams, at best, supply less than 4 percent of the power in the Pacific Northwest and now wind power have tripled the output of those dams. This region enjoys a huge power surplus, about 13 percent last time I looked. If we remove those dams, we still have a 9 percent power surplus. Shipping on the Lower Snake River to the supposed sea port at Lewiston, Idaho is down more than 50 percent by any measurement, up to 90 percent depending on where you draw the comparison. We know from economic studies that we are losing $1.4 billion annually in recreation due to the lower Snake River not being a free flowing. Only 13 farmers use the reservoir behind Ice Harbor Dam to irrigate their fields (these are the same people who think Trump should invoke the god squad to vote to allow wild salmonids to go extinct, no one should listen to this tiny group who put themselves before what God or Nature gave to us). We have spent as much as $800 million in single year for fish and wildlife mitigation for these dams and we're not getting anything in return for our money except illegal federal Biops and obstacles to real, true wild salmonid recovery. Irony of ironies, the so-called fiscal conservatives stand stalwart to defend this ongoing federal boondoggle while those spend crazy progressives pose futile arguments of fiscal constraint and long term savings to a deaf, and in power, status quo loving people who never met a fact they couldn't dispel with unfounded and unhinged partisan rhetoric.

I am working toward a future where the abundance of wild salmon in the Snake River Basin is so great that it challenges our notions to revere them. Won't you join me?

​Lewiston, Idaho-Clarkston, Wash. — Hundreds of people from the Northwest and beyond, including tribal members, anglers, business owners, conservationists, outfitters and recreational boaters will launch on Sept. 9 from Chief Timothy Park for a six-mile roundtrip paddle and rally on the river to demand action to save wild salmon.

This action comes just six months after approximately 400,000 people flooded federal agencies with comments calling for the removal of four costly dams on the lower Snake River, an action that scientists say is the single best thing we can do to save wild salmon in the Columbia-Snake Basin.

“Every voice out on the water on Saturday is a crack in the dams. In exchange for millions and millions of acres of land, we were guaranteed one thing: that we could continue our way of life. Wild salmon are at the core of that. They are irreplaceable,” Julian Matthews of Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment, a volunteer non-profit group made up of members of the Nez Perce tribe advocating for protection of their historic lands and waters, said. “We’re coming together on our home waters in solidarity, with tribal and non-tribal people from across the Northwest, to stand up for our treaty rights, to stand up for our wild salmon and clean water, and to stand up for our health as a united community. We’ve waited too long. It’s time to free the Snake River.”

Snake River wild salmon and steelhead returns have plummeted since the lower Snake River dams were built between 1960 and 1975. This year, Snake River steelhead and salmon populations are returning in some of the lowest numbers seen in years, and in some cases, decades. "We don’t have time to waste. Our fish are sounding the alarm loud and clear this summer. We need to take swift and serious action to ensure our inland communities continue to welcome salmon home to our rivers,” Kevin Lewis, executive director of Idaho Rivers United, said. “We have to hold our elected leaders accountable, especially those who are taking great efforts to silence the voices of hundreds of thousands of people whose livelihoods depend on these iconic fish.”

Earlier this year, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and a minority group of lawmakers introduced HR 3144, legislation they say would “support the Federal Columbia River Power System and the benefits it brings to our region . . . ”

In fact, the bill would do just the opposite: It would thwart efforts to protect endangered wild salmon, hinder development of a more efficient and reliable power system, and risk raising power rates. Advocates on Saturday will direct their action at this bill, urging elected representatives to listen to the voices of the people they represent, reject HR 3144, and put lower Snake River dam removal on the solutions table. “In the decades since the fight to bring salmon back to the Snake River began, a lot has changed: we have abundant wind and solar power to affordably replace electricity from the Snake River dams, barge transportation on the lower Snake River has declined by more than 70 percent, and we have a clear understanding of the potentially catastrophic effects of climate warming on salmon. What hasn’t changed is that our wild salmon and steelhead are on the brink of extinction,” Todd True, lead attorney for fishing groups, river users, clean energy advocates and conservation organizations for Earthjustice, said. “It’s not a question of if, but when we move beyond these deadbeat dams. This flotilla is an effort to rally the region together and embrace this river, our wild salmon, and our Northwest way of life,” Brett Haverstick, education and outreach director with Friends of the Clearwater, said. “We’re coming together to celebrate a growing movement and to take to the water with a clear, powerful message: Free the Snake River,” Sam Mace, Inland Northwest director of Save Our Wild Salmon, said. “We can do this. We can come together as a region, as a community, and chart a new path toward a brighter future that includes robust wild salmon runs, healthy rivers, a thriving economy — and most importantly, keep our communities whole.”

This peaceful, family-friendly two-day event is open to the public, and will open at 6 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 8 at Chief Timothy Park with tribal drummers and guest speakers. On Saturday, Sept. 9, at 8 a.m., the paddle and rally on the water will launch from the Chief Timothy Park boat launch. Camping Friday and Saturday night will be available at Chief Timothy for participants. For full details and to register, please visit FreeTheSnake.com.

Additional Background: Despite $16 billion U.S. taxpayer and Northwest ratepayer dollars spent on habitat restoration and mitigation efforts, not a single salmon species has recovered. In May 2016, for the fifth time, a federal judge ruled the federal government’s plan to mitigate the harmful effects of the Columbia and Snake River dams on salmon and steelhead illegal. In his ruling, he urged renewed consideration of Lower Snake River dam removal and that the system “cried out for a new approach.” Scientists say the single best thing to save crashing wild salmon and steelhead of the Columbia River Basin is the removal of the four lower Snake River dams. Dam removal would honor historic treaty rights of area tribes, return the 140-mile lower Snake River corridor to free-flowing, clearing the path to some of the best salmon habitat left in the lower 48 — and mark the largest river restoration in history.

Thank you for coming to my blog about restoring wild salmon and steelhead in the Snake River Basin. At times, I may write something that is either controversial or something you do not agree with (this being America and all). In no way, does something I have written that you disagree with make you a victim. You are reading my opinion and if you disagree, that's not earth shattering to me. I expect that you might disagree. Disagreement is not something to be avoided. It's how we can learn. We learn by making mistakes and by listening to each other and figuring out where there are holes in our worldview. And everyone has gigantic gaping holes in their worldviews, including me and you. That being said, we continue to destroy our world. We need to stop doing that. You may argue jobs are important, and you are correct, they are important. However, our world and the health of our environment is far more important than some temporary job that your corporate master will take from you the second they see a better bottom line somewhere else. Consider that fact as we continue to destroy our world and as you read this blog. It ain't about you, yet then again it is about you in that it is about all of us and how we the destroyers of our planet have to wake up and start restoring what we've destroyed. Thank you again for reading, I really do hope something you read here is thought provoking. I also hope that you will join me in the hope that this will be the generation that saves wild salmon and steelhead in the Snake River Basin rather than the generation that watched as they passed into history.

Author

Michael Wells is an award winning journalist and photographer living in Idaho. He can be reached at salmonblog AT yahoo DOT com.